Salicetti, who was now a real power among the leaders at Paris, felt that he must hasten to his department in order to forestall events, if possible, and keep together the remnants of sympathy with France; he was appointed one of a commission to enforce in the island the decrees of the Convention. The commission was well received and the feeling against France was being rapidly allayed when, most unexpectedly, fatal news arrived from Paris. In the preceding November Lucien Buonaparte had made the acquaintance in Ajaccio of Huguet de Sêmonville, who was on his way to Constantinople as a special envoy of the provisory council then in charge of the Paris administration. In all probability he was sent to test Paoli's attitude. Versatile and insinuating, he displayed great activity among the islanders. On one occasion he addressed the radical club of Ajaccio--but though eloquent, he was no linguist, and his French rhetoric would have fallen flat but for the fervid zeal of Lucien, who at the close stood in his place and rendered the ambassador's speech in Italian to an enthralled audience. This event among others showed the younger brother's mettle; the intimacy thus inaugurated ripened quickly and endured for long. The ambassador was recalled to the mainland on February second, 1793, and took his new-found friend with him as secretary or useful man. Both were firm Jacobins, and the master having failed in making any impression on Paoli during his Corsican sojourn, the man, as the facts stand, took a mean revenge by denouncing the lieutenant-general as a traitor before a political meeting in Toulon. Lucien's friends have thought the words unstudied and unpremeditated, uttered in the heat of unripe oratory. This may be, but he expressed no repentance and the responsibility rests upon his memory. As a result of the denunciation an address calumniating the Corsican leader in the most excited terms was sent by the Toulon Jacobins to the deputy of the department in Paris. Of all this Napoleon knew nothing: he and Lucien were slightly alienated because the latter thought his brother but a lukewarm revolutionary. The news of the defection of Dumouriez had just arrived at the capital, public opinion was inflamed, and on April second Paoli, who seemed likely to be a second Dumouriez, was summoned to appear before the Convention. For a moment he became again the most popular man in Corsica. He had always retained many warm personal friends even among the radicals; the royalists were now forever alienated from a government which had killed their king; the church could no longer expect protection when impious men were in power. These three elements united immediately with the Paolists to protest against the arbitrary act of the Convention. Even in that land of confusion there was a degree of chaos hitherto unequaled. CHAPTER XV. A Jacobin Hegira.